I'm starting my second year as an analyst in IBanking in Chicago (industrials M&A). I'm a girl too, which is pretty rare in IBanking (my office has 4 females out of 70 professionals), though I'm not sure if admissions people are aware of that. I'm scheduled to take the October LSAT and submit applications this cycle. Given my supposedly unique work experience, I'm wondering at what LSAT you think I'll be competitive for scholarships at the T-14? My gpa is 3.68. So far I've been practice testing in the 172 - 176 range, but who knows what will happen on test day.

I'd obviously like to take out as little debt as possible. If scholarships aren't likely, I have the option of staying in banking for a third year and earning enough to pay for probably 2 years of law school... But that depends on decent bonuses next year and the year after, which are anything but guaranteed.

As a side note, I'm looking to go into law because I don't like finance and I want a much easier lifestyle. 60 hours a week would be a dream compared to my current 90 - 100 hour weeks.

Tabula Rusa gave you excellent advice. However, a word of caution. Law is certainly not the career path to look towards, unless you are looking to do public interest, if you want a "much easier lifestyle".

Also why aren't you just considering corporate finance at a corporation (maybe an industrial one since that's your area at your bank) if you want less hours? Why not get a top MBA (or even just a decent one in a part of the country where you could see yourself working/living) and switch career paths? That would give you a lot more flexibility in terms of the different type of jobs you can work. There are more careers than just banking/private equity etc. and law you know. Good luck either way.

BruceWayne wrote:Tabula Rusa gave you excellent advice. However, a word of caution. Law is certainly not the career path to look towards, unless you are looking to do public interest, if you want a much easier lifestyle.

Banking definitely is more intense than law, but I agree that I would not make this move relying on 60 hrs/week. It's more like some 100 hour weeks, then some 40 hours.

As for LSAT, you need the same LSAT you'd need otherwise. This ain't business school.

IAFG wrote:As for LSAT, you need the same LSAT you'd need otherwise. This ain't business school.

Seconded1-2 years work experience has very little effect on admissions. Despite the conventional wisdom, work experience does make a difference - it's just that 90%+ of applicants don't have the kind of WE that would affect admissions (OP most definitely included)

OP - considering you haven't been promoted to associate yet, let alone VP or MD, you shouldn't expect any kind of boost. 1-2 years of working shitty hours doing shitty work (that half the time a monkey could do) doesn't grant one impressive credentials

IAFG wrote:As for LSAT, you need the same LSAT you'd need otherwise. This ain't business school.

Seconded1-2 years work experience has very little effect on admissions. Despite the conventional wisdom, work experience does make a difference - it's just that 90%+ of applicants don't have the kind of WE that would affect admissions (OP most definitely included)

OP - considering you haven't been promoted to associate yet, let alone VP or MD, you shouldn't expect any kind of boost. 1-2 years of working shitty hours doing shitty work (that half the time a monkey could do) doesn't grant one impressive credentials

ITE NU will eat it up. Not many people are aching to leave a career path that opens many (high-paying) doors for one that is in shambles. Plus they know that firms will love seeing a former I-banker at OCI (assuming her grades are within their realm).

Me personally I think she should just look for a job outside of Ibanking/PE and grab an MBA from Kellogg later on...

IAFG wrote:As for LSAT, you need the same LSAT you'd need otherwise. This ain't business school.

Seconded1-2 years work experience has very little effect on admissions. Despite the conventional wisdom, work experience does make a difference - it's just that 90%+ of applicants don't have the kind of WE that would affect admissions (OP most definitely included)

OP - considering you haven't been promoted to associate yet, let alone VP or MD, you shouldn't expect any kind of boost. 1-2 years of working shitty hours doing shitty work (that half the time a monkey could do) doesn't grant one impressive credentials

ITE NU will eat it up. Not many people are aching to leave a career path that opens many (high-paying) doors for one that is in shambles. Plus they know that firms will love seeing a former I-banker at OCI (assuming her grades are within their realm).

Me personally I think she should just look for a job outside of Ibanking/PE and grab an MBA from Kellogg later on...

BruceWayne wrote:Me personally I think she should just look for a job outside of Ibanking/PE and grab an MBA from Kellogg later on...

Me personally thinks she should suck it up at least long enough to snag an Associate score for her resume, and the accompanying exit options.If she A) has a real ibanking job, and B) isn't a complete idiot, that'll take less time (both calendar and work/study hours) and effort than law school.

If you're talking about the scholarship thing: no full ride but she'll probably get something substantial right?

dingbat wrote:Me personally thinks she should suck it up at least long enough to snag an Associate score for her resume, and the accompanying exit options.If she A) has a real ibanking job, and B) isn't a complete idiot, that'll take less time (both calendar and work/study hours) and effort than law school.

Bonus points if she can snag a CFA along the way

Yeah that's probably great for someone who wants to go the elite finance path but if you hate your job it's really awful to work those kinds of hours and to stay there. You don't want to encourage someone to do something they hate. And unless people are heavily exaggerating the intensity of banking I don't know about it being less work/study hours or effort than law school.

Thanks for the responses. I figured it was all about LSAT, but just thought I'd check.

I'm looking to get out of finance completely. I don't like building models and putting together marketing materials. But I do like the transactional nature of my job. I really like having 5-6 different clients at once and think i'd just be bored working in some biz development group at a F500. Likewise with PE, I'd go nuts holding the companies. I like working in an intense environment and certainly don't mind working 100 hour weeks every now and then. But from what I can tell from people at various "BigLaw" firms in Chicago, they leave work around 7-7:30 most nights with maybe 6-7 weeks a year of 90-100 hour weeks. That is a hell of a lot more reasonable than what I'm doing and what the people above me do.

I'm considering the JD/MBA program at NU but not sure if getting the MBA is really worth it since as of now, I just want to go be a lawyer.

If you're talking about the scholarship thing: no full ride but she'll probably get something substantial right?

dingbat wrote:Me personally thinks she should suck it up at least long enough to snag an Associate score for her resume, and the accompanying exit options.If she A) has a real ibanking job, and B) isn't a complete idiot, that'll take less time (both calendar and work/study hours) and effort than law school.

Bonus points if she can snag a CFA along the way

Yeah that's probably great for someone who wants to go the elite finance path but if you hate your job it's really awful to work those kinds of hours and to stay there. You don't want to encourage someone to do something they hate. And unless people are heavily exaggerating the intensity of banking I don't know about it being less work/study hours or effort than law school.

I've never been to law school, obviously, but i'd say the intensity of working is just a lot different than the intensity of school. I'm essentially "on-call" 24/7 and have routinely had to leave holiday dinners and other family events for work. I can't just put it off and do it after the dinner when my MD is saying he needs it now. Unless I'm mistaken, you generally don't have fire drills in law school either. Fire drills are by far the most stressful part of banking. There are also billions of dollars at stake, which for me, amps up the pressure more than anything in school ever did.

HawkeyeGirl wrote: But I do like the transactional nature of my job. I really like having 5-6 different clients at once and think i'd just be bored working in some biz development group at a F500. I like working in an intense environment and certainly don't mind working 100 hour weeks every now and then.

There are boutique firms that offer a high-transaction work environment, but the only way to get to them is to either be incredibly lucky, know someone, or stick it out in ibanking long enough to find/work with one of them and then transition over.

HawkeyeGirl wrote:I've never been to law school, obviously, but i'd say the intensity of working is just a lot different than the intensity of school. I'm essentially "on-call" 24/7 and have routinely had to leave holiday dinners and other family events for work. I can't just put it off and do it after the dinner when my MD is saying he needs it now. Unless I'm mistaken, you generally don't have fire drills in law school either. Fire drills are by far the most stressful part of banking. There are also billions of dollars at stake, which for me, amps up the pressure more than anything in school ever did.

Lawyers are on-call and have fire drills too. Just ask a Chicago biglawyer how often they turn off their blackberrys.

HawkeyeGirl wrote:I've never been to law school, obviously, but i'd say the intensity of working is just a lot different than the intensity of school. I'm essentially "on-call" 24/7 and have routinely had to leave holiday dinners and other family events for work. I can't just put it off and do it after the dinner when my MD is saying he needs it now. Unless I'm mistaken, you generally don't have fire drills in law school either. Fire drills are by far the most stressful part of banking. There are also billions of dollars at stake, which for me, amps up the pressure more than anything in school ever did.

Lawyers are on-call and have fire drills too. Just ask a Chicago biglawyer how often they turn off their blackberrys.

For sure and it's obviously worse the lower you are on the totem pole. It's not that part that I hate about banking, I mean obviously it sucks some times, but it's pretty exciting when you're on the cusp of signing/closing a deal. I mentioned above I like the intensity. Someone above had said they thought law school was nearly as intense as banking and I was just explaining how working is a different kind of intensity than studying for exams in law school.

Well one of the nice things about law is, if you decide law firm life is not really as different from banking as you'd hoped, there are ways to down-shift and lateral out of the high-stress environment that, from what I understand, don't really exist in the banking world. If you've made it this long in i-banking, I'm sure you'll last long enough in biglaw for lateral options to start popping up.

One nice thing about NU's JD-MBA is that it gives you a good chance at biglaw even if you don't perform very well in law school. But, if avoiding debt is a big priority, it's significantly more expensive.

Seconded1-2 years work experience has very little effect on admissions. Despite the conventional wisdom, work experience does make a difference - it's just that 90%+ of applicants don't have the kind of WE that would affect admissions (OP most definitely included)

OP - considering you haven't been promoted to associate yet, let alone VP or MD, you shouldn't expect any kind of boost. 1-2 years of working shitty hours doing shitty work (that half the time a monkey could do) doesn't grant one impressive credentials

Well I think I disagree with this. Assuming you have about the same numbers as someone they want to let in Wall Street experience can be a big deal. Vetting. If you got through the process to get a job at say J P Morgan, you have displayed the ability to be a 1 in 100 type of person and that says a lot about you. Law schools like most of institutions seek confirmation of their decisions, where possible. If J P Morgan let you in it is less likely that they are making a mistake letting you in. They also want graduates who will someday leave them 20 million dollars to remodel things like the Lawyers Club here at Michigan and often signs of early success are a harbinger of later success. You really can't use the low pay long hours of I-Banking to call it a shitty job, since everyone starting on the street goes through the process. That is kind of like saying medicine is a dead end career based on the long hours and low pay of residents. Rite of passage. If it is such a bad job then explain the following.

It may not be quite the entire 1% but it is close. In his presentation to Bank of America on Tuesday, when discussing "talent (or tentacle) retention, Lloyd Blankfein disclosed this whopper: "Almost 300,000 individuals applied for full-time positions at Goldman Sachs for 2010 and 2011. We hired fewer than 4% of that population, and, though most had multiple offers, nine out of ten people offered a job with us accepted." In other words, it is more difficult to get into Goldman than Harvard.

Seconded1-2 years work experience has very little effect on admissions. Despite the conventional wisdom, work experience does make a difference - it's just that 90%+ of applicants don't have the kind of WE that would affect admissions (OP most definitely included)

OP - considering you haven't been promoted to associate yet, let alone VP or MD, you shouldn't expect any kind of boost. 1-2 years of working shitty hours doing shitty work (that half the time a monkey could do) doesn't grant one impressive credentials

Well I think I disagree with this. Assuming you have about the same numbers as someone they want to let in Wall Street experience can be a big deal. Vetting. If you got through the process to get a job at say J P Morgan, you have displayed the ability to be a 1 in 100 type of person and that says a lot about you. Law schools like most of institutions seek confirmation of their decisions, where possible. If J P Morgan let you in it is less likely that they are making a mistake letting you in. They also want graduates who will someday leave them 20 million dollars to remodel things like the Lawyers Club here at Michigan and often signs of early success are a harbinger of later success. You really can't use the low pay long hours of I-Banking to call it a shitty job, since everyone starting on the street goes through the process. That is kind of like saying medicine is a dead end career based on the long hours and low pay of residents. Rite of passage. If it is such a bad job then explain the following.

It may not be quite the entire 1% but it is close. In his presentation to Bank of America on Tuesday, when discussing "talent (or tentacle) retention, Lloyd Blankfein disclosed this whopper: "Almost 300,000 individuals applied for full-time positions at Goldman Sachs for 2010 and 2011. We hired fewer than 4% of that population, and, though most had multiple offers, nine out of ten people offered a job with us accepted." In other words, it is more difficult to get into Goldman than Harvard.

Not commenting on if OP is "impressive" or not, apps are down too low, and 17Xs are too hard to come by, for schools to admit based on "impressiveness." I predict in a low-app volume environment, schools will LSAT whore harder than they've ever LSAT whored before.

It may not be quite the entire 1% but it is close. In his presentation to Bank of America on Tuesday, when discussing "talent (or tentacle) retention, Lloyd Blankfein disclosed this whopper: "Almost 300,000 individuals applied for full-time positions at Goldman Sachs for 2010 and 2011. We hired fewer than 4% of that population, and, though most had multiple offers, nine out of ten people offered a job with us accepted." In other words, it is more difficult to get into Goldman than Harvard.

So you're saying that in an environment where big banks are shedding jobs and having mass rounds of layoffs, it is harder to get a job there than it is to get into a school that has a relatively fixed intake per year?Or, in a down economy, it is harder to get a prestigious job that pays bank than it is to get into a school that requires you to pay a crapload of tuition?You have amazing powers of deduction

Also, I didn't say IB was a shitty job, I said it was shitty hours doing shitty work. Just because everyone on the street goes through that process doesn't make the work any more complex or impressive, it just means everyone goes through the process (which isn't entirely true, but that's too much of a digression)

I also agree with IAFG that due to the lower amount of apps and the rarity of 17x scores, schools are going to care far more about LSAT score than 1-2 years working at IB(as an aside, getting into IB isn't any guarantee of future success, as most people don't last 10 years in the field - trust me, I know)Further, getting an entry level analyst job isn't some kind of signal that you're something spectacular, jsut that you can get an entry level analyst job - something almost entirely dependent upon your UG and GPA.

The acceptance rate at HLS is 11%, at Goldman less than 4%, so yes it is harder to get into Goldman. Goldman got 300,000 apps in two years, Harvard Law 15,000. Are the applicant pools dissimilar, sure, but hard to determine which pool is more qualified. One group took the LSAT, so what. What does Harvard think, they will grant 2 year deferrals for the purpose of entering an analyst program without hesitation. I think by stating that a monkey could be an investment banker, at least 50% of the time, you have in fact called into question the validity of an IB job.

Ha ha. You could be right. However after OCI here I get the feeling that 80% of the class would drop out in a heartbeat to take a top analyst job. I have a sibling who did T3 law and top street firm and thought the street was more impressive. A sampling of one I know.

michlaw wrote:Ha ha. You could be right. However after OCI here I get the feeling that 80% of the class would drop out in a heartbeat to take a top analyst job. I have a sibling who did T3 law and top street firm and thought the street was more impressive. A sampling of one I know.

I don't think anyone is arguing what you are perceiving them to be arguing-- that iBanking is, in a vacuum, unimpressive. It's in the context of admissions, and whether schools are going to "buy" candidates with a certain kind of WE. While they may want to admit such students, schools are constrained by their numbers, and are going to make admission and scholarship decisions primarily based on maintaining their medians. And there is no "months admitted students spent working at top flight banks" metric on the rankings.